Seasonal Asparagus Soup with Fennel

Marge (00:00:07) - All right friends, we're back with another episode of Bite Me, and this week we are doing a creamy asparagus soup with fennel plant-based filling. Delicious. Stay tuned.

Marge (00:00:20) - Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and certified Goe Marge, and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here, and thank you for joining me today. Hello friends. Welcome back to Yes, another episode of Bite Me, the show about edibles. I am so glad that you're here following along, listening and if you're just joining for the first time today, you're in for a treat because this soup comes from Chef Julie Houser, who's been working with culinary cannabis for quite some time. And I do have an interview coming up with her and the next couple weeks, so stay tuned for that. But she offered this recipe as a treat as something to wet your appetite, if you will, before our conversation. We have one other recipe coming up next week as well to peak your interest to something completely different though. And before we get into this week's recipe though, we have a couple of segments to get through. A couple of things

Marge (00:01:24) - When we're going to start with the weed word, what's your favorite weed word? If you are so inclined, please send me a voice message and let me know because I love to hear these things. I've had so many interesting submissions already. What was the, there was a couple, the one that comes to mind was the one from Noodle who and his friend group started referring to cannabis as Brian, who doesn't love Brian? Uh, my friend TG, who likes to call it the electric lettuce, which I also like because I am the, the jazz cabbage, uh, devil's lettuce person typically. So the electric, the electric lettuce just adds a little pizzazz to that without the negative connotation sometimes that the devil's lettuce does. But in any case, this week's word, I'm going to play the audio for you and maybe you can tell me what you hear because I have to admit that I've listened to this like a hundred times and it's still not quite, I'm still not quite certain as to what they're saying because they say it kind of quickly and the two words rhyme

Annonymous (00:02:32) - Haage cabbage.

Marge (00:02:35) - Now they're either saying Haage cabbage, Haage cabbage with an H, or they're saying cabbage, cabbage, but I think it's cabbage, cabbage. And I don't really know what that means. This person did leave this voice message, thank you so much for taking the time to do that. But they made it anonymous and that is actually something that you can do if you don't want to leave your name and email, you don't have to. But it also does mean that I can't reply. So oftentimes when people send me voice messages, I can hit reply because it just sends them back to their email address.

Marge (00:03:12) - Next we have our cannabis fact of the week and I have been doing more things that you can make with hemp because I find this so fascinating. I think when I first saw an article, it was a few weeks ago when I started doing these can, well, I've been doing the cannabis facts for a little bit, but when I found the article that was talking about things you can make with hemp and it listed a few items out of 25,000 possible things, correct me if I'm wrong, my memory is not always fantastic, perhaps because of the haage cabbage, but I was stunned that you could do that many things with the, I would say lowly cannabis plant, but there's nothing lowly about the ham or cannabis plant. So you could do that many things. And this particular article lists 76 incredible real life products Made from Hemp.

Marge (00:04:00) - Now it's a very good list, it's quite comprehensive, but I would say most of this stuff on this list are not going to be particularly surprising and I really like making this. Um, I really like sherry ones that you might think I've never heard of that before. Cuz when you have a list of 25,000 products, I better actually fact check that on myself. If it's different I'll put it in the show notes. But if you have that many things that you can make with cannabis, there's obviously gonna be things that you weren't expecting. So when they list things like shirts or jeans or hemp shoes, I mean none of that's particularly surprising. Would I like to see more of it on the market? Easily accessible. I would, but the ones that I found particularly interesting from this list, and I will link to it in the show notes so you can look at the entire list of things and perhaps get inspired next time you want to go shopping.

Marge (00:04:53) - But was the food and drinks category. So it says in this article, hemp is considered a superfood for a good reason. The abundant nutrients and number of ways in which you can incorporate hemp into your diet is jaw dropping, being a complex source of protein and having the optimal three to one ratio of omega-3 to omega six fatty acids. Hemp has gained the respective athletes, dieticians, chefs and regular folks who are focused on healthy living a healthy lifestyle. Now I would have to agree, I have read that the, that the cannabis or the hemp seeds are one of the only, uh, products on the earth that has this perfect ratio of omega three to omega six fatty acids. And for any of you who are falling along with this stuff in the news, omega six fatty acids are abundant in our diet. We often consume far too much of them.

Marge (00:05:44) - I love to put hemp seeds on a lot of stuff. Yogurt. I actually recently just made my own cottage cheese for a fun project, which I would recommend trying trying and I will probably do that one again cuz it was pretty easy to do. Made a fantastic snack, just a little hemp seeds and a drizzle of honey. You can make that infused honey as well if you're looking for some of the cannabinoids to help restore your system. But they, they're great on salads. They had like a nice nuttiness to them. Extra protein of course, but this isn't what I was gonna be talking about. We all know that hemp seeds are good for you. It was what stood out to me on this list was, let me find it here. I'm scrolling through. There's actually quite a few hemp foods that are interesting, but hemp vodka.

Marge (00:06:32) - Hemp vodka is fermented and distilled with hemp, so it can be counted as a hemp product. Hemp of vodka contains a 40% alcohol content and is praised by critics for its smooth and mellow character accompanied by appealing fruitiness. So it's fermented and distilled with hemp. The other one that was also a hemp beer. Hemp and hops are relatively close cousins, which is also another fun fact that they are, they are related as far as a plant genius goes. So this pairing is actually something natural fans of craft beers can indulge in a whole new pallet of scents and flavors. These beverages are brewed with toasted hemp seeds that bring in a unique richness. Still not sure if this is a great compo in the great international beer insider competition. In 2014, the Humboldt Hemp Ale won the silver in the American brown ale category. So there you have it.

Marge (00:07:28) - I can link to a link to a couple of these in the show notes as well. So there's a couple more things that you didn't know that could be made with hemp and that's alcohol, which I do find interesting in a way because I guess they're using hemp. And so this isn't going to make you high and maybe they're using this to enhance the flavor pallet of the actual beverage itself. They're not doing this to uh, you know, infuse it in a, in a way that's going to have psychoactive effects because of course, if you're listening to this, you probably know if you've been doing this for a while, that that doing alcohol and cannabis together is an advanced move and not recommended.

Marge (00:08:11) - So like I hinted, I have had, I have an interview coming up with Chef Julie Hauser of Flower Pharma and she is a cannabis chef based out of the United States who's doing all kinds of cool things with cannabis and she makes beautiful recipes that are plant-based. What I love about this particular recipe, of course, is that it's seasonal and I love fresh asparagus in the spring. For the most part, it's the only time that I eat it unless it's on a menu somewhere. But I'm not usually buying asparagus like in January because I figure it's been shipped from a little pretty far away and probably not nearly as fresh and delicious as it is when I could just pick it up on my farmer's market or, or you know, Ontario grown asparagus from the grocery store. So the great thing about Julie's recipes that I already admit that I already talked about is that she shares 'em on her website as a means to show what can be enjoyed seasonally with her own flower pharma ola oils.

Marge (00:09:12) - And those oils are lovely. The ones that uh, she sent to me were the hemp-based ones because obviously I'm in Canada and you can't ship that stuff across the border goddamn it when I can't wait. There was so much cool stuff going on in the states, I mean here too. But they're plant-based oils, olive oil based for the most part. And if you're looking for recipes that focus on on healthy and nutritious fresh ingredients, these ones will work beautifully. So she, if you go to the Flower and farmer website, which I'll link to in the show notes, you'll find this recipe there, but I'll probably also link to it, um, the PDF version on my website as well. But this, uh, this recipe was delicious. It was great. And again, using seasonal ingredients, the st the soup came together quickly. It was wholesome, flavorful, but because it's plant-based you may need to plan ahead a little bit.

Marge (00:10:06) - So if you wanna keep it plant-based, I suppose there are certainly ingredients that you could just go with the traditional milk for instance, instead of the cashew cream that this recipe calls for. Because obviously a creamy soup is gonna have something that makes it creamy and most of the time that's going to be a milk-based cream. But this one calls for cashew cream. Now, I'm not sure if you can buy cashew creamer in the store. I honestly didn't really look because I just made my own. And it's pretty simple to make and that also means that you don't have to have that extra plastic packaging to contend with or, and you don't have too much. Cuz I always find these recipes are like, you only need like four tablespoons and then you have to go buy a whole like, you know, 250 milliliter container or whatever the case might be.

Marge (00:10:53) - And you find yourself digging it out of the fridge three months later and then tossing it out anyway and thinking, well that was a waste. I do that more often than I care to admit, but you end up just with the right amount that you need as well. And I personally always have cashews in my cupboard. I probably eat cashews, raw cashews far too much. And there is just something about the texture of cashews that I love and they lend themselves so well to making something like a cashew cream. So essentially all you need to do to make your own cashew cream, and I'll put something in the show notes so you can try, you can do this yourself, but you're gonna soak some raw cashews and then you are gonna strain them, straighten the water off of them, put those soaked cashews and some water in a blender blend and valla, you have cashew cream. It's pretty simple.

Marge (00:11:46) - And I have to say I am impressed that cashews are the one of the few things at the grocery store that have not gone up in price along with everything else. I mean they're not cheap, that's for sure, but they have not gone up in price. So that's a small win as well. You're also going to need fennel for this recipe, which I think I, if I recall, I bought this at the grocery store. I'll put a pick of the stuff, like a picture of what it looks like in the show notes, but it's the vegetable that tastes like licorice and adds a nice step to this soup. So you shouldn't leave, leave it out as we're putting the soup together itself, it's pretty simple and I mean it's like making any soup, right? You finish it off by blending, you do finish it off by blending all the ingredients together.

Marge (00:12:30) - So it's a smooth creamy soup and then you toss it with your, you top it with your cashew cream. I'm doing this like drizzle motion. Uh, if you can just imagine me doing that. And then what she recommends is pairing it with the Ola bright oil. Now this particular Ola oil was, and that's how you infuse it as well. So this one was gently infused in my particular instance with this hemp oil, which I thought was quite nice again because this meant I could serve it to those who are not imbibing in th h crich infusions in my household, which is pretty much everybody but me I guess for the most part, the only one that's fucking with the THC right now. And so this meant I could serve it to everybody, but again, because the soup itself isn't infused, you can easily add a little extra kick to your own.

Marge (00:13:24) - But the Ola bright oil is a hemp-based, I didn't realize it's an almond oil. The ingredients for this look really nice. I didn't even realize it was almond oil, hemp oil, orange oil, cannabis oil and carum. So it's uh, the citrus and carum spice that really adds this nice sort of first impression when you take a bite of the soup because you allow it to float on the top of the soup. And then you have the cashew cream. So those first bites, you get this nice really taste of this bright orange card oil and it's quite nice. Now if you don't have this particular oil on hand, that's okay, you could just drizzle another of your favorite olive oils on the top and see how that works. As far as an infusion, the soup does call for olive oil as well. So when you put every, like you can do the blending in a blender or you can use an immersion blender, which is easier too if you're, if you have a big enough pot and you have one of those on hand too because then you don't have to get the blender out and do that extra step.

Marge (00:14:36) - But you could also add your infused olive oil in when you're blending and that way you're going to also infuse the whole batch. So if you don't necessarily want to float the oil on the top for that sort of mouth feel and flavor and you're not sure that your olive oil is going to add to the experience, then put it right in at the step of blending. That's what I would recommend. My only recommendation is that you add more s was while you're making the soup, that you add more salt during the cooking process. So don't be afraid to get it a bunch of little spoons and keep tasting during the process. I found that mine needed a little more salt to help perk up the flavors, uh, at the end. And it does call for some salt throughout, so just make sure you're tasting it.

Marge (00:15:20) - I didn't really do that and I should have, and you can easily add some salt at the end, but I like it when you serve, just taste it and it doesn't really need it, but it does serve six as the recipe is written. So I was able to serve this and then I had some nice leftovers the next day too, and it was fantastic. And I had some leftover cashew cream in the ol Ola bright oil as well, so it worked out quite nice. So tune in next week for another recipe from Chef Julie Hauser. And again, this one's gonna be very different from this one, but if you have an abundance of asparagus and you wanna try something hearty, if you wanna try something delicious and healthy, then uh, that you can also infuse, then this is the recipe for you. So thank you Julie for sharing this recipe with myself and the listeners of Bite Me Now.

Marge (00:16:06) - If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing with those that you care about because sharing is caring. You can always talk to me by email or the podcast hotline, just send Marge a voice message or stay [email protected]. You can always stay up to date with the email newsletter that goes out about once, sometimes twice a month. And that helps to keep these episodes timeless and consider using the products and services that are found on the Mar recommends page because that really helps to support the show and at no additional cost or burden to you. So it's a win-win for all of us involved. And those are products and services that I use in my own home kitchen. What am I making edibles? I am your host Mar. And until next week, my friends stay high.